


Sometimes You Hear The Bullet

by annabeth_at_the_helm



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Sexual Content, Underage - Freeform, Underage sexual content, major character death (Tommy), underage experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:13:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24308764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annabeth_at_the_helm/pseuds/annabeth_at_the_helm
Summary: "I'd give ya a kiss, but I can't lift my head." Tommy's breathing was labored as he struggled to speak. "Wanna hear a funny one? I heard the bullet coming… just like in the movies."
Relationships: Tommy Gillis/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Kudos: 16
Collections: Banned Banned Together Bingo 2020, Banned Together Bingo 2020





	Sometimes You Hear The Bullet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shadesofhades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadesofhades/gifts).



> Written for "A Real Downer" on my [Banned Together Bingo card](https://bannedtogetherbingo2020.tumblr.com/rules).
> 
> Title is from the episode, as is some of the dialogue in the very beginning. The pairing of Tommy/Hawkeye as romantic is my imagination.

"I'd give ya a kiss, but I can't lift my head." Tommy's breathing was labored as he struggled to speak. "Wanna hear a funny one? I heard the bullet coming… just like in the movies."

"So you'll change the title of the book, that's all. _Sometimes you hear the bullet_. It's a better title anyway." Hawkeye stared down at Tommy Gillis, his best friend since childhood—still one of them, even though Trapper shared that honor with him, now—and watched as they put the mask over his face to put him under. _I'm going to save him_ , Hawkeye thought desperately. _He can't leave me like this. Not now._

But as Hawkeye worked frantically to prolong Tommy's life, it _was_ just like in the movies, a little reel unrolling in his brain, the moments they'd spent together since grade school…

++

_"Hawk," Tommy said, rolling over on Hawkeye's bed. It was summer, and so hot and sticky they'd both taken their shirts off. They were shoved onto Hawkeye's cramped twin bed upstairs, and the window was open, but there was no breeze to cool them. "Whaddya think about, you know, girls?"_

_This was an odd question. They were fourteen year old boys; what did Tommy exactly want to know?_

_"You asking if there's a girl I like?" Hawkeye responded, rolling too, to face Tommy. In his tiny bed, their faces were only inches apart; Hawkeye could see the seam of his chapped lips and the soft sweep of his eyelashes when he blinked. Tommy had a strange expression on his face, one Hawkeye couldn't read._

_"Uh, y-yeah," he said. "There a girl you like? Nancy's cute, you know, in our class." Tommy's breath was as hot and sticky on Hawkeye's cheeks and lips as the humid air outside. He was staring. Hell, they both were. When Hawkeye nudged Tommy's chin with his finger, they both leaned in at once. The kiss took them both by surprise even though they had both reached for it at the same time, and it was clumsy and awkward; still, Hawkeye's heart started thumping hard, and he could feel the throb of blood beneath the thin skin of Tommy's lips against his mouth._

_When they parted, Tommy glanced away, just long enough for Hawkeye to question what had happened—what they'd just done. But when Tommy looked back, his cheeks were flushed and his eyes were darkened, the pupils blown. Hawkeye's dad was a doctor and Hawkeye knew plenty about a lot of things, like the physical manifestations of arousal._

_So when Tommy lifted his leg and placed it over Hawkeye's hip, leaning into him, the jutting erection that pressed against Hawkeye's belly wasn't really a surprise._

_"D'you mind, Hawk?" he asked, so Hawkeye took him by the hand and pulled it down, between them, to cover his own hard-on. They were fourteen year old boys without girlfriends; it couldn't have been that much of a surprise that they were horny lying in bed together._

_"Let's jerk off," Hawkeye whispered, afraid to say it too loud, afraid that his crush would suddenly become obvious, that Tommy would read it in his face and be disgusted, no matter what had happened when they kissed. But Tommy just nodded._

_So, side by side, lying on their backs with their legs pressed together in the tiny bed, they jerked off._

_And every day that summer, they spent hours in Hawkeye's room, atop the covers, roasting in the heat and in their own juices as, first, they jerked off together. Then they started making out in earnest, face to face, just barely rubbing their dicks together._

_And then they started jacking each other off. Kissing and touching and moaning each other's names._

_It had started out so innocent. It ended with Hawkeye losing his virginity, and when summer waned, and school started back up, the distance between them was hard to take. But Tommy didn't drift away, like Hawkeye was half-afraid he would. They still spent the evenings playing baseball in Hawkeye's backyard or eating sticky watermelon or fruit bars in Tommy's, and waiting for summer._

_Just waiting for summer._

++

"No, Tommy," Hawkeye said, voice broken. "One more long, humid summer, Tommy. You owe me that much. Dammit. Come on, Tommy. _No._ "

"Pierce—"

" _Damn you_ ," he said, hurling the insult at his best friend, the boy who'd taught him how to kiss, the boy who'd taught him how to love. The boy who had shown him who he was deep down inside; the man that knew now that he liked both men and women, but who would never have accepted that part of himself if not for _this_ man, lying on his surgical table with no heartbeat.

Hawkeye felt like a living man without a heartbeat either, to match Tommy. He could remember touching that soft skin of Tommy's chest as adolescents, when he'd felt that heart rabbiting beneath his ribcage as Hawkeye stroked him off, and now, there was just… nothing left.

"Go help McIntyre," Henry said, and Hawkeye stared, disbelieving, at the man who he'd grown up with. This bullet… he had not heard it. The bullet had struck him in the chest and he was mortally wounded, bleeding out, and no one could even see it. No one knew that Hawkeye had been shot, that he'd never heard it coming.

"Sometimes you hear the bullet," Hawkeye whispered to Tommy's poor, beloved face as he lay dead on the table. "I didn't hear it, Tommy. I didn't. Maybe you should keep that title of your book." He paused for one more second, said so softly that if anyone heard it, it would be only Tommy—just like those soft, earnest words they'd whispered to each other in Hawkeye's bed on summer evenings, when twilight was falling—

"I'm gonna read your book, Tommy. Then I'll send it to your family. They should know how brave you are, Tommy. How brave you _were._ You won't be forgotten."

END


End file.
